Students enrolled in assigned public schools tended to have parents who were less satisfied with the schools than students enrolled in either a chosen public school or private schools.

establish[ing] a tax credit for businesses paying the state corporate income tax. Corporations that donate to a nonprofit scholarship organization or an educational improvement organization would receive a credit for 100 percent of the donation.

Yet they're taking pro-active measures to increase school choice—which has been linked to higher graduation rates—while certain South Carolina politicians refuse to consider reform. Why?

If you've got an hour to devote to better education for the children of South Carolina, you can watch a fantastic talk about how the DC Opportunity Scholarship (voucher) program is spreading freedom and saving money. The report is fascinating, the talk is fun to watch, and the imperative to provide excellent and diverse options for every child is stronger than ever.

School choice is about universal opportunity. If you believe in opportunity for every child, you must support some form of school choice.

Some people who claim to believe in "liberal" values believe that a one-size-fits-all government-provided education is in line with those values. This is either extremely confused or hypocritical. The best traditions of liberalism are founded upon expanding options and opportunities for everyone.

Dan Lips makes this point nicely in his piece "When Liberals Support School Choice." Excerpt:

But Pell Grants are just one example of federal school vouchers for higher education. In 1944, President Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill, which provided college scholarships to a generation of Americans returning from World War II. More recently, President Clinton championed tuition tax breaks--the Hope Scholarship and Lifetime Learning tax credits--which give millions of Americans direct subsidies to access higher education.

These programs work just like school vouchers for K-12 education. They allow students to purchase an education at a school of choice -- whether public or private, secular or religious. But while liberals are quick to support school vouchers for higher education, they are much less enthusiastic about giving students younger than 18 the same power to choose their school.

President Clinton embodies Democrats' strange position on school vouchers. In 1998, he vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have provided school vouchers to 2,000 low-income children in Washington, D.C., calling the plan "fundamentally misguided." But just a year earlier, he signed a tax package that included the Hope Scholarship and Lifetime Learning tax credits. At the time, those tax subsidies were projected to help 13 million Americans enroll in a postsecondary institution of their choice after high school.

If Democrats are really concerned about equal opportunity and educational access, they should end this bizarre bias against choice for those under 18 and support programs that make it easier for all parents to control where their children go to school.

We were literally, literally, graduating thousands of kids, giving them diplomas, and they didn't know anything. They really didn't. We now know what they know and don't know

[Public education] has to be completely overhauled. I think we almost have to start with a blank piece of paper. It is odd to say after 43 years in the business that it needs to be overhauled . . . but our kids cannot do it, given the way we are presenting education to them."

After nearly five years, [No Child Left Behind]'s modest school choice provisions are helping few children. According to the Department of Education, only 1 percent of the 3.9 million students who are eligible actually participated in public school choice in the 2003-2004 school year. Only 17 percent of eligible students took advantage of the after-school tutoring option.

There is . . . much evidence that competition and parental choice improve achievement, reduce costs, minimize social conflict, and make schools more responsive to families.

School choice programs have been shown to improve student outcomes and increase parental satisfaction with their children’s schooling. The fact that these programs may also help alleviate the middle class financial crunch is just another reason for policymakers to embrace them.

The Washington Times catches up with Virginia Walden Ford, the mother and activist who is executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice. The competition for best quote in the article is between these two:

[School Choice] empowers parents to select the school they feel best meets the needs of their kids," Mrs. Ford said.

Number 2

"This is not what we fought for," Mrs. Ford said. "We didn't fight to get into buildings. We fought to get a better education."

Read the whole thing.

Now The State is reporting that the crime and violence problem in public schools is even worse than what is being reported in official statements, government reports, and the news media.

This is bad news for parents, taxpayers, and especially children. Safety is a prerequisite for learning.

What can be done? There are two answers—short-term and long-term. One is that unsafe schools must be shut down or at least reformed. (This is one in which "reform" means that proverbial heads must roll.) Safety problems are an extension of a lack of discipline. Schools must be places where adults are in charge and that should begin with empowering the teacher in the classroom. By tying teachers' hands behind their back ("it is against district policy to kick that student out of the classroom, even if he is disrupting learning") we are creating the conditions in which further infractions—eventually violent ones—can follow.

But the long-term solution is more fundamental. We must create a system by which schools that are unsafe are either shut down or reformed. School choice is the obvious candidate. As a parent, would you send your child to a school where there was a significant chance they would come home with significant physical harm, perhaps requiring hospitalization? Neither would your neighbors. Schools that failed the most basic task of ensuring the safety of their student would not get any more students or any more funding. The students' parents would choose other—safer—options. Order and learning would return to the hallways and classrooms.

Today we imprison thousands of children in schools that are unable ensure their safety and consequently unable to give them the learning environment they deserve. When will the legislature finally listen to South Carolina voices by saying "no" to a failing monopoly and "yes" to a parent's right to choose a safe school?

(Unfortunately, political types don't listen to the people who've studied the issue—otherwise we would have had school choice long ago.)

In any case, Professor Hoxby has a new paper which detail exactly how to make school choice work.

It turns out that schools need maximum flexibility to cater to concerns of parents and innovate to meet the needs of children. More specifically, a good school choice program should have:

• Supply flexibility, which means that schools should have the ability to open where there is demand for them, expand with increased demand and contract with reduced demand

• Money should follow students, which means that funding policies must be designed so that schools that are in demand have the funds to expand and those that are not in demand lose funds and must contract; and

• Independent management of schools, which means that schools must be free to innovate in a range of areas, including pedagogy, teacher pay, budget allocation, and the way the school is organised.

The full paper—an important read—is here.

Here's another another nice profile of Caroline Hoxby.

Education expert Andrew Coulson has some comments on what makes a market and how markets can improve schools over at The Heartland Institute. It's well worth reading.

Excerpt:

Over at TownHall.com, Paul Jacob takes a look at the "gallows humor" involved in pretending to educate millions of kids. He doesn't find it funny.

Best part:

For example, years of low- and no-choice monopoly schooling have taught a majority of America's parents one lesson: not to complain much. They've learned the tacit message from America's school administrators: Mind your own business. Your children's education is our business, not yours. OK, K.?

Of course, a vocal minority of parents, of all races and ethnicities, do demand better.

In yesterday's editorial, The State once again denied that there is anything wrong with having public schools which spend $10,000 a student yet in which 70% of the students can't read and write at proficient level. The pseudonymous blogger Bill Smith has a nice protest—complete with numbers—over at I Don't Believe the State.

Bill did a good job running the numbers, so let's take a look at the moral argument. We believe that parents, not bureaucrats, are in the best position to figure out what the best education for their child. We also believe that parents love their children more than administrators.

So school choice lets parents choose the schools for their child. In respect to other taxpayers, who may not be parents, school choice significantly reduces the amount of money that they will have to pay in property taxes. Creating choices for parents, reducing burdens on taxpayers—that's how we're going to get schools in which children thrive and reach their full potential rather than suffer, fail to learn, and drop out.

Freedom to choose schools has clear advantages for taxpayers, for parents, and for children. So what is The State's response? How do they justify the idea that parents should not be allowed to choose? How do they justify that the state bureaucrats should have a de facto monopoly on your kids and, no matter how badly they screw up, they should keep that control?

It's barely a response at all: The State says there's no problem with South Carolina government schools even though they're last in the nation in SATs, first in the nation in drop-outs, exhibit a huge achievement gap, and required a waiver from the federal government for failure to achieve No Child Left Behind standards. Here's the new spin: Within eight years—after 600,000 children have had their opportunities diminished and their dreams curtailed—our public schools will reach "average." So, you see, there's no need for a parent's right to choose the best schools for their child. It's good enough to continue to privilege the system over the children rather than to risk reforming the schools under parental control/parent choice model.

The article is one more piece of evidence that the fight for school choice is a battle between the special interests of an army of bureaucrats and citizens' efforts to raise the chances of success for a generation of children. Special interests are tough but you can only fool people for so long before they reject all the excuses for failure, the abuses of power, not to mention the inefficiency and unfairness of the whole system. Here's to hoping that real reform comes sooner rather than later—for our children's sake.

Through the Magic of Google Video, you can now watch Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman's series Free to Choose online. Part four of the 1990 series, "What's Wrong With Our Schools" is depressingly familiar. Even though this documentary is more than 15 years old, our schools still suffer from problems with poor discipline, crime, inefficiency, lack of achievement, high dropout rates, etc. Of course, we never pursued Professor Friedman's plans to let parents choose and control schools. Maybe it's time to give it a shot?

One great part is where Arnold Schwarzenegger, talking about freedom, implores each of us to "chase your own rainbow." But that's not even the best part of this highly informative 48-minute TV clip.

What's the latest on the evil right-wing and their nefarious plans to reform public education?

Why, it's a Georgetown Law Review entitled "The Secret History of School Choice: How Progressives Got There First."

Beware, it's a 33-page article on the history of ideas—not for the easily distracted.

The purpose of pointing out the history of progressive support for school choice as well as the well-known conservative contributors to the cause is not merely for novelty or to show off the expansiveness of the coalition.

No this is more important than that. People of good faith who have studied the issue agree that parents should have more control over their child's education; bureaucracies have too much power; and competition should be used to improve the quality of education while keeping costs down.

The only ones who consistently oppose real education reform—the kind that empowers parents—are the politicians, profiteers, union bosses, and bureaucracies who make their living from watching our children fail. Shame on them.

We usually don't take the time to respond to news and opinion in The State. There's no point. They have a strong interest in a set of positions that's diametrically opposed to ours. In particular, by always supporting higher taxes, greater spending, increased state control, The State is little more than a servant to power. By contrast, SCRG is in favor of lower taxes, fewer regulations, stronger individual rights, and parental choice in education. We think the people are smart enough to run their own lives even without help from the ruling elite in state government and The State editorial boardroom.

So this is why we don't usually mention The State on the blog—but we'll make an exception for this Cindi Scoppe editorial. It's a howler.

Scoppe claims:

Dr. Howard Fuller is the President of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University. He is also the founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

In his latest editorial, he challenges the Black Community to cut bait with the government monopoly on education and redouble their efforts on behalf of underserved black children from disadvantaged homes.

He is particularly critical of the attempt of the public school bureaucracy to "buy off" support in the Black Community while failing to undertake the reforms necessary to increase achievement.

Big-city school systems have historically employed large numbers of African-Americans, and for most of us the traditional public school has been our only hope for receiving an education. The traditional system has served many of us well. But that was then and this is now. Today's public school systems are still employing us, but too few are effectively educating our children.

That is by no means the only controversial and thought-provoking part of the piece. How about his ultimate paragraph in which he compares the death-grip of government schools on disadvantaged communities to African-Americans' plight against slavery? School choice is like the Underground Railroad:

Some argue that choice serves only a portion of the population, and that we should expend all our resources on a system that – presumably – serves all. I think we should take a lesson from Harriet Tubman’s fight against slavery. She fought everyday to end it, but as she waged that battle, she set out to free as many slaves as possible. I believe we must work hard to improve the traditional public education system in this country, but in the mean time, we have a moral responsibility to rescue as many of our children as we can “by any means necessary.�

People familiar with the movement agree that Howard Fuller is one of the most passionate and effective crusaders for school choice. It's worth your time to read the whole thing.

Once again, the misnamed National Education Association is failing to protect—and actively undermining—the interests of public school teachers. It has been known to happen in other industries that unions will not reflect or protect the interests of its members. But in no other realm outside of public education is it the case that the union is so consistently diametrically opposed to the true interests of its members. It's a shame that public school teachers have to bear the brunt of this unrelenting abuse.

The gist of the story can be found in the dysfunctional culture in the first sentence:

Too many of the country's top teachers don't teach in the worst schools.

Alright, what's going on here? First of all, in what other industries would you dare to suggest assigning people to places without their consent? Perhaps in the military and for obvious reasons this is necessary. But do we really want to compare our public schools to war zones?

Public school teachers, like everyone else, prefer functional working environments. In schools, this means decent discipline and safety, a culture of learning and achievement, and a supportive administration.

Now the National Education Association is meeting in Columbia to try to figure out how to systematically undermine the preferences of teachers.

Question: In what other industry does the largest union conspire against its members in order to force them to take jobs they don't want?

Apologists for public schools say everything is fine and dandy but the reckless abuse of teachers suggests a level of upside-down thinking that boggles the mind. Does anyone doubt that we're in more trouble than we thought?

Observers of the religious scene may be familiar with a story that has cropped up periodically over the last couple of years. Members of the Southern Baptist Convention, the second largest denomination in the U.S., are beginning to consider and debate their relationship with government-run K-12 schools that some feel neither respect or acknowlege their values.

National Public Radio recently had a story on this latest phenomenon. The audio is available here.

A plan to create tax credits for individuals and businesses that contribute money to K-12 scholarship organizations was introduced in both chambers of the Missouri General Assembly this spring, where it reached the House floor with a favorable vote from the Education Committee.

Reasonable people on all sides of the political spectrum agree that a parent should have the right to choose what type of school their child goes to. Parents know their children best, love them most, and are in position to see if the school is doing its job (and ready to switch if it isn't).

By now, it's clear to almost anyone with eyes that the reason we don't have parental choice is that a lot of people, unions, and contracters make a lot of money by keeping the power of one-size-fits-all schooling. But taxpayers, parents and children suffer from worse-than-necessary schools. Eventually, this injustice will fall away as the people demand freedom of choice, and the spike in quality and options that come when functioning markets replace bloated monopolies.

But that doesn't mean that there are no debates left regarding choice. For instance: what is the best vehicle for choice? Many home schoolers aren't waiting for political reform, but that's not an option for everyone. So the question is how will the government get out of the way of a parent's right to choose while ensuring the best education for every child?

Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute argues that vouchers are a more expedient and politically practical way to get to school choice.

Arguing the other side, David Dieteman maintains that tax credits are more effective and efficient form of school choice policy.

In the end, we all want more choices for parents, more opportunity for children, and to better schools by letting them compete to innovate and improve. The good news is that choice is coming (with a lot of hard work and ingenuity); in the meantime it's useful and fun to think about how we'll get there.

South Carolina has among the most troubled public school systems in the country ( e.g., see here) and the 46th lowest level of public health (according to this measure). There's a strong intuition that these two things are related and the evidence shows that it's true. Here's the precis.

There is a large and persistent association between education and health. In this paper, we review what is known about this link. We first document the facts about the relationship between education and health. The education ‘gradient’ is found for both health behaviors and health status, though the former does not fully explain the latter. The effect of education increases with increasing years of education, with no evidence of a sheepskin effect. Nor are there differences between blacks and whites, or men and women. Gradients in behavior are biggest at young ages, and decline after age 50 or 60. We then consider differing reasons why education might be related to health. The obvious economic explanations – education is related to income or occupational choice – explain only a part of the education effect. We suggest that increasing levels of education lead to different thinking and decision-making patterns. The monetary value of the return to education in terms of health is perhaps half of the return to education on earnings, so policies that impact educational attainment could have a large effect on population health.

No, that headline wasn't ironic.

Coastal Carolina University in Conway demonstrated first-rate institutional ethics last week when it acted to make sure that a seminar for new school principals would remain an educational—not political—event. In hosting the event, the university made sure that both the Democratic nominee for State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex and the Republican nominee Karen Floyd were invited. When Floyd was unable to attend, the administration decided that it would be fairer to go with non-candidate speakers rather than showcase one campaign over another.

This seminar is put on by state Education Department with taxpayer money so it's only right that it doesn't become free advertising for either campaign. It's good to see that Coastal Carolina takes its duty to the taxpayers seriously. Now if only we could get other governmental agencies to follow CCU's example...

In our republic, the best reforms usually come from state and local government and then work their way up to federal policy. Nevertheless, it was heartening to see U.S. Congressman Vito Fossella (R-New York) introduce a bill in the House of Representatives that would create a federal tax credit of $4,500 per family to offset the cost of private or parochial school tuition.

Why $4,500? Because that's the average tuition for Catholic schools in New York City, a notoriously expensive place to live. Around the nation, the cost is usally somewhat less. Please remember this fact the next time some misinformed or disingenuous opponent of school choice quotes astronomical numbers like $10,000 or $20,000 for tuition per year. Some high-profile schools do cost that much but they're abnormal.

Bottom line: while extending excellent education for every child, school choice is also good deal for parents and taxpayers.

Can a little more taxpayer money lead to higher student achievement for the struggling students in our state?

Education reporter Joanne Jacobs is on the case. I hope the people a the SCEA are paying attention but they're probably not.

Usually education lawsuits are filed in order to get the government to give more taxpayer money to schools that are failing to educate their students.

These days, some parents in New Jersey are filing suit to get the right to send their children to schools that are doing well, whether they're public or private.

Funding failure or putting parents in charge: which approach do you think will work better?

The SC Policy Council's Ashley Landess has an excellent op-ed about school choice today in The State, of all places. It's too good to quote; read the whole thing.

School choice laws mean more money for education—without raising the tax burden. Case in point: Evan Feinberg and Dan Lips outline how Pennsylvania's law has dramatically expanded opportunities for children by giving increased choices to parents and more funding for schools. It's not surprising to learn that the program is wildly popular and growing rapidly.

The 2001 school choice law offers corporations tax incentives to fund private school scholarships and “school improvement� projects at public schools. Under the law, corporations can claim a tax credit of up to 75 cents per dollar for a one-year contribution and 90 cents for a two-year contribution.

Initially, the tax credit was capped at $20 million for private school scholarship donations and $10 million for public school donations. Since 2001, it has been has expanded, reaching an annual cap of $44 million in 2005.

Businesses have been eager to participate. Last year, contributions hit the cap for private school scholarships just days after tax credits became available, raising $44 million to help 27,000 students attend private schools.

But many more children could receive scholarships if more tax credits were available. In 2005, more than 500 companies were unable to participate because of the cap. Responding to this strong demand, this week Gov. Rendell agreed to support legislation that expands the tax credit program-with a new annual cap of $54 million, the expanded tax credit will pay for thousands of additional scholarships.

Gov. Rendell’s support demonstrates growing bipartisan support for tax credit-based scholarships. Last month, Republican gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann proposed doubling the cap for corporate contributions to Pennsylvania’s scholarship program. Gov. Rendell’s office responded by pointing to the governor’s record of raising the cap in 2003 and 2005.

South Carolina's educational problems are more severe than Pennsylvania's. But the Keystone State has been quicker to learn that giving parents more power to choose has means that children are better matched to schools that meet their needs. It's true that schools perform better when they're subject to the discipline of competition and choice, but the ultimately beneficiaries are the children.

With our last-in-the-nation graduation rates and SAT scores, isn't it time that South Carolina tried something different, something which has been proven to work in other states?

School choice is coming since parents and taxpayers will not put up with an expensive, failing public school monopoly forever. The only questions remaining about school choice are exactly when and in what form it will arive. The former question has been the subject of a lot of political hooting and hollering. But what about the minor issue of making good policy: Who's going to pay attention to that?

The always interesting Andrew Coulson at the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom looks at the question of what makes a school choice proposal better or worse. Fascinating stuff.

Summer is a good time to catch up on reading. Here's a true summertime classic from prominent Stanford professor Terry Moe. This is not just bloviating from another random pundit—Professor Moe wrote the book on school choice.

The interesting part is that Moe, a professor of political science, wrote "How Choice Will Prevail" when the prospects for school choice were much worse than they are today. Consider that this is before Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of choice, before the first federal school choice program in DC, before the recent victories for school choice in Ohio, Utah, Arizona, etc. etc.

Aside from the wise remarks on school choice, the second lesson of this essay is that political science is not useless! With a solid understanding of the structural arrangements of American education and the dynamics of the political process, Professor Moe predicts the eventual proliferation of school choice well before it became the certainty it is today. (Of course, if the bureaucrats have their way, school choice will come in time for your great-grandchildren. Prior generations will just have to suffer while the administrators and unions enrich themselves.)

Anyhow, to really understand the professor's prescient and provocative take, read the whole thing. Enjoy!

Thousands of Ohio children are about to experience brand new opportunities as more and more Buckeye State parents prepare to choose their child's school.

A few weeks ago, Pam Adams received a letter in her mailbox announcing a new statewide school voucher program.

Eager to find a better education for her two children, Adams jumped at the chance for more information.

After a tour and meeting with the principal of New Covenant Christian Academy in Walton Hills - the closest participating private school - she decided to send her children there in the fall.

She won't know if her applications for vouchers are approved until the state sends out notifications in a few weeks. If they are, the $6,500 tuition bill for both children will be completely covered by the state.

"It makes me feel better about their education," Adams said of 8-year-old Mark and 9-year-old T'ara, who last year went to John Dewey Elementary School in Warrensville Heights. "It's difficult to pay for private school."

The only problem in this otherwise good news is that you have to be in a failing public school to receive this voucher. Doesn't every parent deserve the right to choose?

Anyhow, it's worth it to read the whole thing.

When South Carolina taxpayers object to being used as ATMs by politicians and special interests, they're not just ignored but actually insulted. People who suggest that taxpayers are being bled dry are told that the children will suffer if we cut or freeze taxes and, besides, how can you be so heartless anyway? In this way, politicians and lobbyists use schoolchildren as human shields while they continue to pump up the government's budget by taking away more and more from our families.

Of course it's all non-sense. If spending increases were the key to good schools, South Carolina would be doing just fine since we're #1 in spending increases since 1960.

Anyhow, a nice article by Dimitri Vassilaros in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review points out that the raise-taxes-or-the-children-die argument is a false choice. Government can use its limited resources more efficiently if it gives parents the chance to choose the best schools for their children. With competition, schools improve. With more opportunities, children achieve. And with a smaller government, taxpayers get some relief.

Here are the money paragraphs:

Do you remember how the pro-administration, pro-bureaucracy, pro-monopoly, public-schools-only crowd used to scream and yell that school choice tax credits were "a right-wing plot?" Do you remember how they said that conservatives couldn't possibly care about kids because they were supporting a parent's right to choose schools? (I know, it doesn't make sense to me, either.)

Well, if they had any intellectual honesty, they'd have to start eating crow. (Fortunately for them, they don't.)

Recently, one of the most liberal states in the union, Rhode Island, passed a scholarship tax credit to help poor kids get school choice. Bravo.

The program is way too small—it's capped at $1 million—but it's a start. (Why is $1 million too small? Consider this: if each corporation made the maximum contribution to the opportunity fund, the entire program would be limited to a whopping 10 donations.) The ridiculously low ceiling makes no sense: it shouldn't be illegal to help children beyond the miserly limit set by legislators.

But the philosophical point is a big one. Our mission and efforts have to be focused on helping children, not on preserving government bureaucracies. Rhode Island is beginning to understand that and their children will benefit. But what about us? South Carolina has arguably America's most troubled public school system. Will the state legislature move to enact pro-child reforms to get kid into the best school possible? Or will they simply continue to defend the bureaucracy and the status quo?

The cavalcade of corruption in the public schools carries on. People are getting rich while our children are getting shafted; the headline says it all:

WHERE ELSE BUT IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT WOULD $800,000 BE ALLOWED TO DISAPPEAR?

Or maybe it's the last paragraph that says it all.

Given that Bremond, Texas is a very small town with only 900 residents, for $800,000 to go missing with nobody in charge looking for it leaves Bremond's schoolchildren, parents, teachers and taxpayers in a real Texas-sized lurch.

And if you think it doesn't happen all the time in South Carolina, well, I've got some affordably priced real estate on Kiawah Island to sell you!

And the resolution—complete with perp-walk photos—is here.

The Charleston Post and Courier reports that Hollywood endeavors that decide to locate in South Carolina can expect big tax advantages. This makes movie producers happy.

No one begrudges huge tax cuts for Hollywood starlets, unctuous directors, and egomaniac producers. If it helps them get the job done, that's okay.

But we need to have priorities. Four posts downblog ("Washington Post...") I noted that tax credits were having a large effect in Virginia on land preservation. It works wherever it's tried: If government will quit picking people's pockets and hog-tying them with red tape, people will get the job done.

Now if only we could get the state legislature to be as helpful to South Carolina's hard-working parents and struggling children as it is to the Big Shots in Hollywood.

A depressing new report confirms that South Carolina has the lowest graduation rate in the country—and by a significant margin, to boot.

This is very sad news. Unfortunately the more you know about the consequences of educational (non-)attainment, the sadder it is.

A mountain of evidence shows that high school drop-outs, as a group, earn only 2/3 as much as those who finish high schoool and less half as much as those who finish college. Here's the U.S. Census Bureau on the issue; here's the National Center for Policy Analysis. (These two were chosen quickly; dozens of other studies confirm the same thing. These results are not in question.)

So if the current one-size-fits-all system can barely get even half of our kids to finish school—let alone excel while they're there—then wouldn't it be logical to try something new?

In particular, if school is proving to be such a bad fit for so many of South Carolina's children that they would rather take their chances as drop-outs, as dangerous as that is, than complete high school, then maybe we need to offer new options and opportunities to parents.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are making very good money off the current system. It's not suprising that they like things the way they are. The elite political class—including the administrators, the school boards, the Big Unions, the school building contractors, and The State newspaper—are all defenders of the way things are against the "threat" of parent-empowering school choice reform.

They'd rather that our children languish in poverty than change their precious system.

But what matters more: the system or the children?

Lame duck state superintendent Inez Tenenbaum already made her decision. We hope the next superintendent will choose the children.

Tax credits let people cut their own tax rates by contributing to certain projects, like sending a child to the school of their parents' choice. (e.g., $1 contributed to scholarship fund = $1 off your taxes.) The Washington Post has a nice story explaining how tax credits work. The conclusion is that incentives work even better than expected. How many government programs can you say that about?.

As growth spreads west from Washington along the Piedmont, record numbers of property owners are protecting their land from development by using a little-known state tax credit that has transformed Virginia into a national leader of private land conservation.

In the six years since the General Assembly enacted a tax credit for landowners who place their property under conservation easements, the number of such easements has skyrocketed. In 1995, landowners donated fewer than 6,000 acres; last year, the figure exceeded 35,000, according to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation.

Of course, this tax program is about land conservation, not school choice. Since everyone can agree that we want to save forests, farms, and wooded areas, the program has had an opportunity to work. Unfortunately, unions, bureaucrats, and politicians cannot agree that we want to help all children get the best possible education, be it public or independent schooling, so they refuse the tax credit option for parents. Given the successful record of tax credits programs, we are left to wonder, "When will helping children get the same priority that we give to preserving nature?"

Fast facts about DC school choice from this nifty new official federal study:

§ 65% of DC private schools are participating—up from 53% last year

§ Over 4,000 students are partipating

§ 2 Out of 3 schools have tuition below $7,500 (since the voucher is for up to $7,500, that means tuition is free for students)

§ Just under 2/3 of the schools are religious while the rest are secular

§ Over 90% of participating students are African-American

§ Average enrollment is 236 students

§ Average minority population is just over 75%

§ Average student/teacher ration is under 11-to-1

Here are two for Tuesday: two important newspaper articles detailing exactly what's happening on the school choice front and why it matters.

1. Representative Lewis Vaughn calls many of his colleagues to task for lacking the spine necessary to allow school choice—the most important issue in South Carolina—to get a fair hearing.


2. The Post and Courier has a story about a Montessori school in Charleston. The school would doubtless be a godsend for many parents whose children, for whatever reason, aren't doing well in public school. But without school choice, the dream remains a dream.

The nation's largest urban K-12 school choice program—the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program—is about to undergo a 50% expansion. After a long campaign waged by parents and other activists, another 7,500 students will be able to attend schools of choice, be they public, private, or parochial.

Interestingly it seems the familiar that people become with school choice, the more they like what they see.

Though the school board in the 94,000-student Milwaukee district opposed the expansion, board president Ken Johnson said competition with private schools has helped the public schools.

High school graduation rates have improved, students at all levels are performing better on tests, and the schools have become more accountable with tax dollars, Johnson said.

''It can be a healthy competition, not a harmful one," Johnson said.

Of course, winning over public officials is a nice side effect but not the main goal. The main goal is improving student outcomes. School choice seems to be working on that front, too.

To Jacob Walton, 17, Milwaukee's public schools were distracting and failed to challenge him. Last year, Walton enrolled at Messmer High, a Catholic school. He has become senior class vice president and plans to attend the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater next year. He would not be heading there if not for Messmer, he said.

''It's about business and it's just a strict learning environment," Walton said. ''There's no distractions. The teachers care. Everybody is just so supporting and it's just a great environment to be around."

Like many other voucher students, Breanna Walton, 8, rises before dawn for the long bus ride from Northeast Washington [DC], "amongst the crime and drugs and all that," in the words of her mother, April Cole Walton, to Rock Creek International, near Georgetown University. There, she learns Spanish with the children of lawyers and diplomats.

Ms. Walton said that her neighborhood school "has broken down," and that she would have done just about anything to keep Breanna from going there. "Every child here should be able to say I'm going to set my sights high," she said. "I refuse to let my child be cheated."

Other parents have similar stories.

Patricia William, a single mother, said that at first she liked her son Fransoir's public school, John Quincy Adams Elementary School, a tall sprawling building in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. Teachers seemed good, but overwhelmed. It was other parents, not teachers, Ms. William said, who told her that Fransoir was hyperactive. "I was not getting quality information from them on time," she said. "For some reason, it was not working."

Fransoir is one of 62 students with vouchers attending Sacred Heart Elementary, a Catholic school of 210 students, where he learns prayers along with five-digit multiplication and long division. He takes medication for his hyperactivity. Last year, he teamed up with another child to research the sinking of the Titanic. This year, he is interested in reptiles. Ms. William said her son today has nothing in common with the boy who once lay on the floor, turning in circles like a clock wound too tight. Now she is learning from him, about more than just math or reading or a sinking ship.

"All the effort he's making every night makes me want to sit with him and study," said Ms. William, a high-school dropout. "I'm learning academically, but also about making an effort."

* Across the country, the parents of over 2.4 million students have chosen Catholic schools.

* Over 99 percent of Catholic school students will graduate from high school.

* 80 percent of graduates go on to attend a four-year institution of higher learning. That's an important statistic when you consider that 80 percent of the fastest growing jobs in the 21st century will require at least some postsecondary education.

Speaking about of the Washington, D.C. School Choice Program, Spellings points out that over 50% of participating families have chosen Catholic schools since its inception.

The program provides low-income students with grants of up to $7,500 to attend the private or parochial school of their choice. In its first year, over 1,000 students have already taken advantage of the program.

The more you think about it, the more that letting parents remove kids from failing schools and putting them in the schools of their choice sounds like a big win for parents and children.

Don't South Carolina parents deserve the same opportunity?

A new law just passed in Arizona has expanded that state's successful and wildly popular parental choice program.

Here's the upshot—

The bottom line: An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 children will be able to get scholarships to private or parochial schools over the next year.

Extending the chance to attend a school of choice to a few thousand more kids is a small but real step forward. Let's keep fighting.

This is the school choice quote of the day, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

It looks as though some parents in Australia are about to receive an increase in school choice.

South Carolinians deserve the same options.

During the Clinton administration, Andrew Rotherham was a domestic policy advisor to the President on K-12 education issues.

So it's probably raising some eyebrows that a prominent progressive such as Rotherham—publisher of the wildly popular blog eduwonk, founder of 21st Century Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, and co-director of Education Sector—is speaking out to say that America's public schools can't stay a monopoly if they want to satisfy parents and help children.

Here's Rotherham in an article from the St. Petersburg Times:

During the last century many industries, from the old trusts to modern industries like telecommunications and airlines, experienced fights between producers and consumers. Producers of goods and services naturally seek to protect their market share any way they can while new providers fight to enter the marketplace.

As one of the last quasi-monopolies, public schools are now facing these same pressures. Consequently, producer interests such as interest groups representing teachers, principals and school superintendents fight against vouchers while advocacy groups representing parents fight for them. It is an old story, just relatively new in education in its intensity and its current form - school vouchers.

This is not to say that Rotherham's abandoned the Democratic Party. To the contrary, Rotherham's afraid that if they don't do something soon, it's the voters that weill abandon the Democratic Party:

That is because the Opportunity Scholarship Program and Florida's two other private-school choice programs are proving very popular with parents. Florida is not an anomaly; various choice schemes offered in other states and cities are popular as well. In fact, whenever parents are given greater educational choice through private or publicly funded voucher programs or through public charter schools they've responded enthusiastically. This vigorous demand for choice among parents should be a wake-up call for supporters of public schools.

The struggle for justice is long and hard. Nevertheless, parents from New Hampshire made it to victory's doorstep before the establishment managed to tell them that there was no room at the inn.

In January, the New Hampshire State Senate passed a bill that would have created a school choice Scholarship Fund which would have provided school choice for 2,000 children—but the number would have risen to 14,000 in seven years. Then, earlier this month, the state House of Representatives rejected the bill by a single vote.

The bill had its share of flaws, particularly the fact that it granted choice to a very small number of parents and children while leaving the others with the status quo. Nevertheless, it is significant that another school choice bill came within a single vote of passage.

Ultimately, getting so far along in the process may whet the appetite of activists, parents, and taxpayers who are longing for reform. Parents want the same choices for their child's education that they have in almost every other area of their lives. How long can their hopes be denied?

Over at EducationNews.org, Dr. James Leininger prescribes school choice to heal what ails our children:

As an emergency room doctor, I saw too many children pass through our doors whose lives had gone horribly wrong. All too often, they were kids who had fallen through the cracks despite generous public and private efforts. My colleagues and I could help mend their bodies, but their real needs went far deeper than the best surgeon could ever address.

Almost 15 years ago, I read about a private scholarship program helping kids out of bad schools in bad neighborhoods in Indianapolis. I thought, "That's the answer!" That summer we offered 1,000 scholarships to low-income children in San Antonio. The first week we saw more than 6,000 applications from desperate parents.

For a clear and level-headed analysis, you can't do much better than Leininger's piece. Go read the whole thing.

In today's Myrtle Beach Sun George Mason University economist Walter Williams notes that government schools repeat intensely political messages to their captive audience of youngsters. Williams thinks schools should teach academics while values instruction should be left to parents' good judgment.

Longtime veteran of South Carolina politics Bob McAlister takes a hard look at what plagues our state's struggling public schools. Despite the mendacious claims of bloated unions and the incompetent bureaucracies, McAlister shows that inadequate spending levels aren't the problem.

That's the conclusion you get from this Dan Lips piece over at Fox News.

The good news from the article is that school choice efforts are succeeding in spite of politicians who talk out of both sides of their mouth.

The nation's longest-running urban school choice program is poised to increase its enrollment by 50%. In Wisconsin, it looks as if the Governor and the Assembly Speaker have reached a compromise on a proposal which would allow the pioneering Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to enroll 7,500 extra students for a total of 22,500.

Although critics remain, passage of the bill seems assured.

[Assembly Speaker] Gard and [Gov.] Doyle said they are confident that the package will make it through the Legislature.

"It's not an agreement between (just him) and I," Gard said. "It's going to pass the Legislature without a doubt."

For over 15 years, school choice in Milwaukee has proven popular enough among parents to resist attempts by unions and special interests to undermine and even abolish it. The program is currently 10 times its original size—even before its impending expansion.

Since the beginning of the drive for school choice in South Carolina, few commentators have been as supportive of every parent's right to choose as Issac Bailey of The Sun News. Bailey never fails to offers fresh, insightful, and thorough analysis and patiently debunks the persistent myths recycled by those who favor our current monopoly public school system.

One such myth: critics of parental choice claim that giving people a choice would lead to low standards. A couple of weeks ago on his blog Bailey pointed out that you can be in favor of high standards for children while allowing those standards to evolve in the marketplace. Private schools have been successful in employing a variety of different stringent standards. The result: they consistently outperform public schools on achievement. Bailey reprints an interesting column that demonstrates the way that private school accountability measures manage to get results that public schools can only dream of.

Anyone who wants to know the nuts-and-bolts of how school choice boosts achievement should take a look at this handy piece.

You know it’s bad when elected officials turn to the media to defend them.  While The State newspaper has been a stalwart supporter of Inez Tenenbaum during her failed tenure, she’s now looking for more help from the liberal media in light of last month’s 20/20 report.  Tenenbaum uses her February 2nd message to the masses to tout Rock Hill Herald editor Terry Plumb as her knight in shining armor, linking his “excellent editorial responding to the 20/20 segment” to the email. 

This seems to be Ms. Tenenbaum’s M.O. - when people don’t take everything she says at face value she throws a temper tantrum and uses so-called “opinion leaders” like Plumb and The State’s Brad Warthen to fight her battles.  Thank goodness for real journalists like John Stossel who look at issues from all angles before developing an opinion.

As an aside, here is a submitted - but to date unprinted – response to Terry Plumb’s editorial from Rock Hill resident Hollie Bennett.

With U.S. Representative John Boehner's Feb. 3 upset victory in the race for House Majority Leader, school choice activists have reason to rejoice. As it happens Boehner had previously been the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

As chair, Boehner has publicly taken a consistent stance on the issue of education reform by insisting that every parent should have a choice so that every child can have a chance. Collected over the years, here are some of Boehner's more notable quotes on school choice.

"I strongly believe that parents need a safety valve to help their children escape failing schools that can’t change or won’t change. Private school choice empowers parents with the option to give their children the best education possible. We should allow parents to have that choice.� — April 25, 2001

"I am here today because I believe that all children, regardless of their economic background, deserve a safe and productive learning environment. I believe that we ought to trust parents to make the best decisions about their children's education. I believe that the current system in the District of Columbia is robbing both parents and children of the right to a quality education. And I believe that competition in the education system creates a culture of achievement that will improve the quality of every student's academic experience." — June 24, 2003

“What this paper confirms, again, is that school choice strengthens public education in America,� Boehner said. “When we give parents the ability to make choices about their children’s education, we give underachieving schools the incentive they need to change and improve. Money alone is not the magic cure for what’s ailing public education.� — August 20, 2003

"The Senate has followed the House in acting to provide help and hope to the troubled D.C. public school system and its students," Boehner said. "This legislation will provide new choices for thousands of low-income parents with children in the nation's most troubled public schools. And it means new hope and new resources for a public school system badly in need of reform." — January 22, 2004

The Beaufort Gazette has a nice story about the continuing struggle to ensure an excellent education for every child in South Carolina. Parents, taxpayers, and their legislative allies are proving they won't quit until they've won freedom of choice for every parent and a good school for every child.